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What Went Down: Red Bull Thre3Style Malaysia @ The Butter Factory KL

Look at the list of RBMA alumni on their official website (www.redbullmusicacademy.com), it’s an impressive lineup of credible musicians, most notably their selection of DJs and producers. When Red Bull Blue & Silver (Europe) began expanding their influence to our region, bringing their support and love for music to the forefront, we were excited to see what that would mean in the long run. This is a brand that works hard to cultivate the scene, imagine them working their magic here.

Red Bull Thre3Style is a self-described competition wherein DJs compete for the title of best party rocker. The catch is that they have to play 3 different styles of music. That fact, as it turned out during the inaugural local heat of the competition, was really blurry as the flurry of generic club-friendly tunes amassed themselves into a uniformed sound of…well the average club night in KL, which is perfectly fine considering the theme – party rocking. Who better to rock the crowd than a resident DJ who’s had experience doing that on a (sometimes) nightly basis?

T.K.I. kicked off the competition with a set more suited for Boiler Room than The Butter Factory KL. Had the sound system functioned better, he could have fared better. This kid had the energy to get off his console and do the cooking dance for one, and he played Darq E Freaker and Danny Brown’s ‘Blueberry’, that sh!t was made to get dudes wilding out! Alas, this wasn’t the crowd made for that kind of tune. Sorry kiddo, but we deffo enjoyed your set.

Nash D followed up with a more conventional club-friendly hip hop. Then Haydez and Faith was up next with their respective sets, treating us with a 2 consecutive playlist that was rooted in hard bass. It was more 3 EDM styles with these 2 DJs. Tipsy Han gave a more rock-dominant set but nevertheless mixed differing music genres effortlessly. The following DJs after all ended up being in the top 3.

First up was DJ Reeve, whose set was an amalgam of all the expected hits from a multitude of genres (hip hop to trap style to nu metal). It was a pretty strange set – from Baauer, Papa Roach (lolwut), to Michael Jackson?! Regardless it worked the crowd best if the judges were to be believed, Reeve was crowned championed later on the night. Good luck with the regional rounds!

Veteran DJ, and pathological participant of DJ competitions, Ben Cracko looked confident behind the deck. You can tell he’s done this too many times to get the shivers. Starting his set with obligatory scratches as accompanied by what sounded like the soundtrack to an epic, he followed it up with some electro ish. From thereon it was all about technical skills – backward scratching, beat juggling, and all that jazz. Because the theme of the night was odd combination of genres too, apparently, Ben might have outdone Reeve by going from Korn to P. Ramlee.

Tatsuro played last, automatically giving him the best slot of the night, and also had the most hype. We were sure he was going to win, it helped that he was something of a crowd favourite too. Despite technical problems early on (at least he didn’t get the worst sound like T.K.I though), the man pulled through and gave a set that justified the Thre3Style ethos, as per requirement. Daftpunk, Jackson 5, and Jay-Z were the order of the night.

In the end, there could only be one champion. As stated earlier, Reeve was crowned #1, and Tatsuro came second with Ben Cracko third. Reeve will represent Malaysia in the Red Bull Thre3style World Finals in Toronto, Canada.

Uncle Nu (Nu-Mark) told us days before the show that good doesn’t mean anything anymore today. To counter that, Reeve was good at entertaining a particular subset of audience on that night – that’s gotta mean something.

Find more pictures of the event here. Red Bull Thre3Style Malaysia went down on Friday 8 March ’13 at The Butter Factory KL. Keep up to date with their latest happenings at www.redbull.my and follow them on Twitter at @RedBullMY.